Yes, this is indeed a fact, on the Internet there are thousands whose sole job is to sell you a bum deal.

Every hour of every day there is a poor hard working person looking to make their family’s future better by starting their own E-commerce Business. And everyday they get taken to the cleaners by people who are in the business of getting something for nothing.

People just like you are getting ripped off on a daily basis. They work hard, scrimp to save enough money to start their own E-commerce business only to get ripped off time after time.

There is an online industry devoted to finding ways to part you from your hard-earned cash without ever having to fulfill any obligation. Once they learn that you are looking to start a business and are interested in purchasing things like website builders, education material about auctions, a consultant who knows about ebay selling or wholesale product services they are on the case. They hound you trying to get their greedy paws into your money.

They are no better than the grifters with the three card Monte. They are immoral con-artist and you can bet that 9 out of every 10 listing’s on the page a search engine is for one of these instead of a legitimate business. Here are a few you should be on the look out for.

Wholesale Directory Posers

Online you find “Sales lead Generators” posing as wholesale directories or wholesale product representatives. You find them listed at the top in the search when you are looking for “Drop Ship”, “Wholesale” and various searches having to do with online sales. They are very good at making themselves look like legitimate companies. They offer low prices coupled with fantastic promises and their websites look very professional indeed.

What they do not want you to know is that what they are offering is either junk or something they stole from another source. Most often the information is outdated but they do not care about that since the website is a sham anyway. They use the website just as an information capture point. They get your email, home address, phone number and even sometimes your credit card information. This is what they are after in the first place.

Why? So they can sell the information all over the place. That is why you find yourself fielding annoying phone calls and getting emails from people and businesses you never even heard of. They sell your information to direct marketing firms that bombard you with offers for things you are really not interested in.

If you purchase anything from any of these sources the person who originally and fraudulently captured your information will get a commission off the sale. The reason they are called “Lead” generators is because you are the lead they are generating to others.

Most often they offer you useless “how to make money on the Internet” information or newsletters for a small fee. The real money for them comes from selling your information to others.

Review Sites with Their Own Agendas

In 2006 a new avenue of misinformation opened up on the web. Wholesale product companies started setting up sham review sites. The site extols itself as an independent review site that has a review of the most popular online wholesale directories. The one holding the number one position is the directory that owns the review site. There will be nothing on the site that will let you know that the site is actually owned by that company. The majority of these types of sites are bogus. Since the inception of this farce Internet affiliate marketers have begun their own “Review Sites” to promote the products they are selling.

All of the products on the site are items that the site owner gets commissions on. The number one spot is generally filled with the one item that will bring the highest commission.

Broker Networks

Although not illegal nor necessarily a scam broker networks are nothing more than a new form of marketing that requires you to buy and sell to others. This is most often seen as multilevel marketing, The gist of this scheme is that you have sent lots of money buying some of the products from them and then you graduate to the level of “Broker” now its up to you to unload the goods you purchased. Most often these companies won’t process the application without proof of how much you have to spend. If you run into something like this knowing that all they are after really is your card number so guard it carefully. It may not qualify as a scam but it leaves a bad taste in the mouth non-the-less.

The Infomercial

You see them all the time on late night television. They are always “well kept secrets” or “amazing but little know secrets” they have people smiling in front of wealthy homes and fancy cars.

These people who supposedly are just like you but had the courage to call the phone number and buy the system and now they are millionaires. Get real. No one gets wealthy without a least a little effort.

They play on the desire and longing to be out of debt and independent in our finances. The sad part is that even though our logical minds tell us this “bunk” some of us still buy it. Hoping this time it might be for real, only to find that you have been suckered yet, again.

There are so many variations on these scams that they are too numerous to cover them all. From “Drop Shippers” who are only glorified middlemen that have a directory of thousands of which may be twenty are real if you are lucky to those offering to build you your own website for free. Please do not be fooled hold onto your money and do some research before you shell out you do on the say so of an unknown entity on a website.

If you are being asked to buy products and pay a membership fee run for the hills most of these companies have prices so high that you will never break even let alone make a profit.

Internet scams are real and are a real problem. If you have some to add to this list we would like to hear from you.